U.S. President Donald Trump (R) and Russia's President Vladimir Putin talk as they make their way to take the 'family photo' during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders' summit in the central Vietnamese city of Danang on November 11, 2017. (Photo credit should read JORGE SILVA/AFP/Getty Images)

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Features » August 1, 2018

Jonathan Chait Is the Last Person We Should Listen To When It Comes to Trump and Russia

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Could it be that reporters like Chait, who are obsessed with finding the next Watergate and tend to err on the side of military intervention, aren’t exercising enough skepticism?

“Why are so many leftists skeptical of the Russia investigation?” wondered New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait on July 29. It’s a reasonable question, and one with a pretty interesting answer — an answer, unfortunately, that Chait seems unwilling to confront.

According to Chait, left-wing critics of the murky Trump-Russia scandal “consider the issue to be overblown, a distraction at best, and the seeds of a dangerous backlash at worst” — which is accurate. But Chait ties this skepticism to an alleged favorability toward Trump’s “realpolitik alliance with Russia,” rooted in a supposed left-wing hostility to “American sovereignty,” as well as in “frustration with the way the Russia investigation cuts across the electorate … in a way that frustrates their ideological project.” Chait believes, among other things, that the Left is foolish to underestimate “the potential vulnerability the Mueller probe has opened up for the administration.”

This is all nonsense.

There’s little evidence Russia and the probe are a vulnerability to Trump, given relative voter apathy toward the subject, something many on the Lefthave been saying for a while now. Even Democrats outside of Washington, D.C. say so. A recent Gallup poll found less than 0.5 percent of Americans think the “situation with Russia” is the United States’ most pressing issue.

But Chait’s case here is also weak for the same reason that hamstrings all such think pieces: a refusal to deal with the most compelling case for skepticism.

Take the cyber-disinformation “attack” on the United States. The reason many on the Left don’t take it seriously is because, well, it can be hard to do so. A recent study found that fake news, which made up a pitiful 0.1 percent of Facebook’s daily ad revenue, was a small part of people’s news consumption and was mostly reaching “intense partisans.” An earlier study found that few Americans used social media as their primary news resource during the election, relying far more on cable television. The Facebook ads that were supposedly to blame for Clinton’s loss not only got laughably small engagement, but many—if not most—broadcast progressive messages.

Meanwhile, many on the Left have been clear about the dangers of an outsized focus on Russia’s actions in 2016. They’ve warned that it risks reviving a neo-McCarthyite atmosphere that will quickly backfire on the liberal-left. The myopic focus is rehabilitating the public standing of war-hungry neoconservatives and scandal-ridden architects of the government’s ever-expanding national security state. It casts deeply rooted homegrown problems as something simply imposed by an evil foreign hand. It feeds a dangerous post 9/11 chauvinism that treats dissent as disloyalty. And it serves as an obstacle to peace and fuel for militarization, including a startling nuclear arms race that has continued apace under Trump. Helped in part by fear mongering over Russia, the Pentagon is now getting a massive budget, with an extra $6.5 billion devoted specifically to deterring Russia in Europe. The increase since last year alone is more than Russia’s entire military budget.

These critics have also warned that an obsession with what Russia did flattens context. Turning Russia and Putin into a one-dimensional, uniquely aggressive evil risks repeating the mistakes of the early Cold War, and conceals debate about how Western actions have brought us to this mess. This obsession allows the Five Eyes governments to deflect the previously growing public attention on their own spying and cyber activities. It scapegoats Russia while leaving untouched the far more extensive, influential and open influence operations in the United States conducted by Saudi Arabia and Israel. And all of this serves the interests of traditional centers of power, which have been pushing for conflict with Russia for years, but would prefer the U.S. government keep its own foreign meddling capabilities unchecked and forgotten.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a left-wing critic who doesn’t find the U.S. vulnerability to cyber-attack concerning. But their solutions tend to hinge on beefing up U.S. cybersecurity, or reviving the international treaty on internet security that Russia and others put forward back in 2009, only for the U.S. and Europe to refuse.

Here’s a different question one could ask: Could it be that reporters like Chait, who are obsessed with finding the next Watergate and tend to err on the side of military intervention, aren’t exercising enough skepticism?

Chait, like many other pundits, has been caught up in nationalistic, pro-war fervor before. After September 11, he urged Democrats to “maintain their unity behind the war on terrorism and give Bush all the funding for it he needs.” He accused the Left of “looking for reasons” to oppose the Afghanistan invasion, and argued that “humanitarianism … requires more American fighting, not less.” In a now-infamous 2002 column, he argued that “Saddam has provided strong evidence that he will not allow anything to deter him from pursuing weapons of mass destruction,” that a war against him would deter future dictators, and that alternatives to military action in Iraq had “failed for more than a decade.” He asserted that it’s “difficult to imagine that deposing Saddam will not greatly improve the living conditions and human rights of the Iraqi people,” and as late as May 2003, mocked the idea that Saddam had no WMDs, even arguing that their absence “proves that inspections could never have worked.” Chait was, of course, disastrously wrong.

Chait’s catastrophic misjudgement and subsequent events in Iraq didn’t appear to prompt any soul searching. Three years into the invasion, Chait argued that Bush simply “mismanaged” the war. Five years after that, he backedNATO intervention in Libya, with similarly disastrous consequences.

Yet Chait and others continue to cast skepticism and caution as somehow extreme, and prudence as suspect. Maybe instead of asking why many on the Left are so skeptical toward the Russia scandal, it’s time for writers like Chait to ask themselves why they’re not.

Branko Marcetic is a regular contributor to In These Times. He hails from Auckland, New Zealand, where he received his Masters in American history, a fact that continues to puzzle everyone who meets him. You can follow him on Twitter at @BMarchetich or email him at branko.95.m@gmail.com.

The author argues that the Russia investigation is specious because: peopledon’t care and it’s highly unlikely that interference by Russian was effective.The only logical response to that is, so what? It is completely irrelevant.Trump and/or his people could have conspired with Russians to the intendeddetriment of the US and it does not matter if they were effective, or if anyonecares. Nor is that relevant to potential obstruction of justice, which, by theway, does not require an underlying crime. (The point of obstruction is toprevent the finding of a crime. See Scooter Libby.) Further, now that aninvestigation has been undertaken and they are following the money, it isextremely likely, in my judgement, that they will uncover clear and documentedevidence of money-laundering and tax evasion, for starters, by the mobster inchief. We won’t even bother raising perjury, bank fraud etc

Posted by James McCormick on 2018-08-07 12:41:39

Check out all of the McDonnell-Douglas and Raytheon ads in the venues where his pieces are published. Always, cui bono? This is capitalism, after all.

Posted by brunssd on 2018-08-04 08:57:54

Hardly deserved from a fool.

Posted by lorantrit on 2018-08-04 03:30:59

Do you really not know this?"

Do I really not know what? You haven't said anything specific!

Hacking who?

"Dirty tricks"? What does that mean?

"Influencing" opinion makers? How? With ESP? Is influencing illegal?

You sound like a weak-minded sheep spitting out talking points somebody else gave you. Your conspiracy is vague enough to capture anything you think might come in handy, and broad enough to claim that anybody within the entire nation of Russia was involved... yet you haven't named a single specific person (Putin!) That's how we know that you are just making things up, and don't actually have anything at all.

In Watergate, they had the individuals who committed the crime. They knew where and when the break in was. They had physical evidence to prove it, and could trace the perpetrators back to Nixon.

You don't have anything remotely like that, and you know it. You have "the Russians" (all 144 million of them, I guess) "planting" (how? by paying off reporters? by calling in false tips? by using spies inside the newspapers to rewrite copy? ... you never say) "news stories" (which stories? give me a citation of a specific news article you can show came from Russia! what news paper was it in? what page can I find it on?)

This juvenile nonsence is just not going to work. It falls apart with the slightest amount of questioning. And you think you're going to impeach on the basis of these illusions? You think your stories aren't going to be torn apart in court, or in Congress?

You've got nothing, and it's embarrassing to watch you struggle like you are, trying to convince people with stories you can provide absolutely no specific information on. You are the quintessential tin foil hat-wearing conspiracy theorist.

;-> Give yourself a gold star for following an obscure historical reference!

Posted by dcleve on 2018-08-03 17:53:47

"Craven Quisling", and Trump's calls for increased immigration from Norway? I see a pattern here, and it points directly to Donald J. Trump.

Posted by lorantrit on 2018-08-03 16:21:21

"investigated and there was no prosecutable offense" is, explicitly, exonerated.

Posted by dcleve on 2018-08-03 14:08:08

As I noted, Hillary is a wonk. Politicians job is to create the APPERANCE of reliability, and wonks are usually terrible at this, as Hillary was. Hillary spent 15 years focused on making her personality more relatable. By the end of her senate career, roughly half of the GOP senators had been turned around, and no longer considered her the devil incarnate, and instead thought well of her. When she started campaigning for prez, her speechifying was awful, forced, and patronizing. By the end of her first run, she had transformed into a moderately good public speaker. Your accusation that she did not try to humanize her public persona is absurdly untrue.

Posted by dcleve on 2018-08-03 14:06:22

Do you have a link to this MOO? Does it have any relevance whatsoever to your dismissal of the Russia investigation -- or is it just smokescreen/tangent/whataboutism? What is onesided about Russia meeting with Trump's campaign to collaborate? Is the existence of the Russain troll farms, their creation of a virtual social media echo chamber audience, their employing of 3rd party eastern Europeans to create fake news sources, and their efforts to influence decision makers directly, and their effort to break into our state electoral rolls, things you dispute?

Posted by dcleve on 2018-08-03 14:00:19

1- 'exoneration' means being cleared of wrongdoing. Comey provided a lengthy list of her wrongdoings. Hillary was not exonerated, she was given the benefit of prosecutorial discretion. It was not a manufactured scandal and you are proving that HIllary apologists will excuse anything.

Come back when you want an honest discussion.

Posted by Lizzyp on 2018-08-03 11:46:21

So how do you feel about the 99 page Memorandum of Opinion from the lead judge of the FISA court that details massive abuse of the FISA surveillance process under the Obama Administration?

Your take on the state of the 'evidence' regarding Russian collusion is pretty one sided.

Posted by Lizzyp on 2018-08-03 11:41:22

There is a world of difference between 'recreating her personality wholesale' and 'making an effort to be more relatable.'

As for your version of her accomplishments - I'll agree to disagree.

Posted by Lizzyp on 2018-08-03 11:38:01

That is wonderful!

I remember my feeling of foreboding when Obama was elected- I disagree with him on virtually every economic policy he introduced, so I just didn't expect good things to come - but I had the grace to hope I was wrong, since that would be better for the country. These people, the ones who called me a hateful bigot for not being optimistic about Obama's economic policies, are now the ones spouting vile hateful things and some of them are actively hoping for failure.

Posted by Lizzyp on 2018-08-03 11:25:49

Having a president blaming the US for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, trying to break up NATO and the EU, actively collaborating with Russia to influence the US and other nation's politics, wreaking the US economy, and denying that Russia is even running an influence program is beyond the Russian's wildest dreams of what they could accomplish. Your endorsement of this shows you to be a Quisling.Or a Comrade.

Posted by dcleve on 2018-08-03 10:00:04

I agree! When Obama was President, Putin did whatever he wanted, knowing there would be no repercussions.

Posted by ReasonedVoice on 2018-08-03 09:35:16

The Russian influence program was a broad, multi-mode effort, which included hacking, dirty tricks, false flag, planting news stories in legitimate media, influencing existing opinion makers, creating fake media sources, and turning Wikileaks into their mouthpiece. Do you really not know this? The explicit conspiracy that prompted the meeting was that the Russians told the Trump organization they had dirt from Hillary's emails that they would release. Two explicit campaign actions: Trump scheduled a speech around this, and Don jr gave advice on when this dirt should be published. Why do Have you not actually read the conspiracy emails? Where are you posting from, are you a comrade, or a quisling?

Posted by dcleve on 2018-08-03 08:56:15

That's mainly why I read the news (I currently live in the UAE).

Posted by Paul Hunt on 2018-08-03 07:29:01

So what was the conspiracy? To buy some ads on Facebook?

Posted by Velocitor on 2018-08-03 06:14:26

Better sell when he leaves office. The Establishment will do everything it can to reverse everything he has done.

Posted by Velocitor on 2018-08-03 06:12:56

Interestingly, shortly after Trump's election, I decided to put into fast forward the idea to purchase a house (in beautiful Oakwood, Ohio). I was convinced that his presidency would bring the economy to life in a variety of ways -- and that near-zero interest rates would be a thing of the past. I suspected that jobs would be created and that home values (in Oakwood at least) would appreciate quickly.

In May 2017, I paid $305,000 for a house in the Schantz Park Historic District.

Today it is worth, minimally, $335,000. If I pay roughly $15-20,000 to close off a room addition and make it its own (fourth) bedroom, the price will rise, minimally, to $370,000.

Trump effect?

Maybe. The Dayton, Ohio economy is largely driven by manufacturing, and manufacturing in 2017 rose significantly here and elsewhere throughout Ohio.

Anyone seeking to slow down the Trump economy ought to be rightly viewed by the rest of us (who are winning) as enemies.

If, strangely, many of these same people are likewise benefiting economically since Trump's election -- but would cut off their own noses to spite their faces by doing him in politically -- then I can't think of a better word than "deranged" to describe their behavior.

Say what one will about Russians, having barely survived the seventy-year Soviet debacle, they would not be so stupid as to repeat such a mistake rooted in selfishness.

Selfish is another word I'd use to describe the behavior of Trump's enemies -- who, if I my own improving economic profile is not unique, are America's enemies more generally.

Posted by Paul Hunt on 2018-08-03 05:21:53

So -- because Hillary could not recreeate her personality wholesale she wasn't "humble"??? WTFudge?

Hillary was an outstanding policy wonk -- which is not a naturally likeable personality type. Policy wonks genrally don't become successful politicians. And upon neterieng the Senate, Hillary was a poor politician. But she deliberatley stepped out of the limelight, worked to collaborate with other senators, and learned how to get things done in Washington, and was one of the most effective senators during her stint there.

She did the same as Sec of State -- which is norrmally one of the most public of cabinet posts. She avoided the limelight, listened to her professional advisors, and was one of the best Sec States I have seen. The Iran embargo, with Russia and China on board, was amazingly skillful. The Arab Spring had been a US policy objective for 50 years. She knit NATO back together, and re-established us in the Pacific while de-escalating tensions with China. Your inabilty to recognize the skills you described in Hillary is a massive blind spot.

Posted by dcleve on 2018-08-03 03:53:36

The conspiracy is out in the open, and has been for a year. Trump's campaign manager met with a Russian agent, with the meeting agenda being collaboration between soviet security services and the Trump a campaign to get Trump elected!

The repeated insistance that there was no conspiracy, and no collaboration, when everyone in the world can read the emails that spell it out -- truly is a derangement syndrome.

Posted by dcleve on 2018-08-03 03:40:52

Clinton was exonerated. the whole e-mail brouh-ha-ha was a manufactured "scandal".

Conspiracy with an enemy of the US, is treason.

Trump apologists will excuse anything.

Posted by dcleve on 2018-08-03 03:38:32

LOL! Having a buffoon leading the US would be detrimental HOW to Russia?

Posted by dcleve on 2018-08-03 03:35:49

The Russians had no ability to know if they would be successful. They gave it a go, though, and it paid off hugely for them. Shooting down aircraft, poisoning whomever they want -- they have almost a free hand, with this craven Quisling in the WH.

Posted by dcleve on 2018-08-03 03:32:18

Thanks for your comment. It prompted me to look up WikiLeaks in Wikipedia. Apparently, WikiLeaks may or may not have had as much or more impact on the election outcome as Comey's TV performances. How much either or both contributed to Clinton's blowing a seven point lead in the polls in the 30 days prior to the election is unknown. Were the polls wrong? Was it the Electoral College? Was it the dang ole Russkies? Was it Comey? Was it WikiLeaks? Or was it just bum luck?

Posted by lorantrit on 2018-08-03 02:28:28

Wow. This piece is one piece of BS after another.

Russia attempted to manipulate our election, with subterfuge and dirty tricks. They did this on a broad front, as any well run plan would do, as one cannot know beforehand what will and won't work. Many of their efforts were ineffective. This piece, and the commentators here, point to those ineffective actions and claim Russia could not have had any influence -- while deliberately ignoring the actions that were highly effective. Russia turned Wikileaks into a propaganda arm against Hillary and Obama, and this propaganda effect almost certainly turned the election.

Russia collaborated with the Trump campaign, and Trump collaborated back. We know this from, among other info, a meeting held between Trump's campaign chairman and a KGB operative, with the stated agenda of collaboration! This collaboration was mostly ineffective, but treason does not have to succeed to be treason.

The Trump admin has been "tougher" on Russia? Russia invaded a democracy that the US had a defensive alliance with, has attempted to break up the Western alliance with electoral dirty tricks, and directly attacked the US democratic process. We expelled a few diplomats, imposed a few more sanctions, and provided a few arms to the democracy that is being invaded? Will Ukraine be able to REPEL the invasion with the arms we provided? Will these sanctions be painful enough to prevent future meddling? Does Russia care at all if a few diplomats get expelled? These are all ineffective posturing. If the US were not MASSIVELY tougher with Russia over these behaviors, the failure to be massively tougher would constitute dereliction of duty by a president. And we have not been massively tougher ....

Posted by dcleve on 2018-08-03 01:25:31

Look at how dismissive they were of the email investigation- they will defend their belief that it was a partisan witch hunt and that she was 100% exonerated until they are blue in the face, while calling you all sorts of horrible hateful things for suggesting otherwise.

There are apparently therapists who are focusing on treating those with stress and anxiety problems that they consider to be rooted in uncertainty and fear caused by Trump. Unbelievable. They are irreversibly invested in their Trump is Evil narrative and it is going to be a hard thing for them to admit that they are way overreacting after claiming that every word out of his mouth is the start of the Apocalypse. It's really, really scary.

Posted by Lizzyp on 2018-08-02 16:26:31

This article is spot on.

There are two types of people who buy into this Russia-Manchurian candidate-Putin can swing our election with a few million dollars while HRC can't do it with one billion types:

A. Neo-consB. People who hate Trump so much that they'd rather follow the neo-cons to Iraq III just to watch him burn

Both of these types transcend party lines. The irony is that a lot of people in group B hated the neo-cons during the Bush years, but here we are again with millions falling under their spell.

Posted by Geordie on 2018-08-02 16:06:11

"Could it be that reporters like Chait, who are obsessed with finding the next Watergate and tend to err on the side of military intervention, aren’t exercising enough skepticism?"

Ya' think? You can sum up the attitude of Chait and his fellow "Russia! Russia! Russia!" zealots with one line from the old television show, The X-Files:"I want to believe!"

The idea that Putin wanted Trump elected makes no sense on the face of it. During the campaign, Trump's stated policies would be detrimental to Russia, whereas as Clinton's would be advantageous to Russia. Much more plausible is that Putin, like almost everyone else (especially the Dems and their MSM propagandists) was certain Hillary would win, and was just per-emptively trying to damage and weaken her Administration and the USA by fomenting FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) in the American populous.

And he is still succeeding in doing so, aided and abetted by the Dems and the MSM!

And as for the idea that Putin 'has something' on Trump, let's not forget it's Clinton's emails that they (and the Iranians, and Chinese, and N. Koreans) got hold of, not Trump's. Yeah, those 30,000 'personal' emails that Hillary was so desperate the FBI not see that she had them bleach-bitted after they were subpoenaed. Just one of the felonies she was let off scot-free on.

Posted by ReasonedVoice on 2018-08-02 15:58:19

I would have to consider that your mainstream Democrats (mom and pop Union workers in the rust belt) did not think Hillary was a good idea. But in the years under Obama, the Clinton machine had managed to emplace itself within the DNC at the highest levels. It no longer mattered who the average Democrat voter wanted, the Party System was manipulated to ensure only Hillary could win.And while a lot of democrat voters could never bring themselves to vote R...and certainly never vote Trump...they found themselves not wanting to vote for Her either. So they stayed home and Trump was able to capitalize on the electoral Systems to rack up the individual States to victory while Hillary concentrated on collecting the Coastal money from States she was going to win anyways.

Posted by Kelly J on 2018-08-02 15:55:29

When people used the terms "Bush derangement syndrome" and "Obama derangement syndrome" it was a bit of an exaggeration. But Trump Derangement Syndrome is very real and has really produced mass insanity among a sizable minority of the population, including most "elites." It's plain that if the parties were reversed, all these people defending the FBI, CIA, Susan Rice, etc. would be screaming that the government's and MSM's attempts to defeat and then remove Trump amount to the worst political scandal in American history.

Posted by RCPreader on 2018-08-02 15:25:50

I find it fascinating that people who are rabidly convinced that Trump Russia Collusion was real and the WORST.THING.EVER! seem to be the most dismissive of the possibility that the FISA process was horribly abused and that the Russia investigation is a trumped up matter intended to delegitimize a political opponent. They will tell you that Trump is an idiot and a buffoon and has the impulse control of a young child, but somehow they believe he was able to put together and execute a conspiracy so complex and tightly run that after 2 years of investigating they can't prove that it even existed. But believing that the previous administration abused the justice system in verified ways is, to them, a ludicrous conspiracy theory.

Posted by Lizzyp on 2018-08-02 15:19:28

I would add the obvious DNC shenanigans that probably turned off a significant number of voters. Her arrogant refusal to listen to any of the critiques about her style did her no favors either. She has been called 'unrelatable' for decades, yet she made only minor half hearted attempts to overcome that, suggesting that her mindset is always going to be 'I know what is best!'

I have said for many years - I don't want the smartest person in the room to be President - I want someone who is humble enough to recognize that they aren't the smartest person in the room and wise enough to find smarter people to advise, and then actually listen to them.

Posted by Lizzyp on 2018-08-02 15:13:25

Agreed. Also, after 8 years of one party or another having the presidency, the general sentiment is it's time for a candidate that represents something different than what we had the last 8 years. That's why Obama beat her in the 2008 primary, and partly why she lost in 2016. Both times she positioned herself as the safe, establishment choice - but that's not what a critical mass of voters wanted at either time.

Posted by Arclight on 2018-08-02 15:05:57

Quite simply, Russia played the left like a fiddle. They wanted to sow discord, and it worked better than they could have imagined. They fed the Hillary campaign the dossier gossip, that has ultimately led to the Mueller probe.

Posted by Hulk Slogan on 2018-08-02 15:05:45

Also, Hillary was, at the time she ran, viscerally detested by at least 30 % of the electorate. This 30 % would rather run barefoot over fire than give her the vote. On the other hand Trump may have been thought by many as a charlatan, not up to the job and a clown BUT and this is a big but, he was not viscerally detested. Why democrats thought it was a good idea to run a woman with so many inadequacies, AND starting out with a huge group who hated her with every fiber of their being, is the 64 K question.

Posted by taek kenn on 2018-08-02 14:57:49

Golly! Who would be skeptical of the russian collusion delusion? Someone with a brain? That does exclude democrats and rinos.

Posted by doug masnaghetti on 2018-08-02 14:29:32

I've had this very argument with liberal friends (full disclosure, I'm right of center) - one doesn't have to like Trump to ask "where's the beef" when it comes to the supposed collusion that resulted in his election. If the Russians did in fact scheme to get him elected, they got hosed - he's tougher on Russia than our last several presidents by any measure. We're also supposed to believe that the relatively small amounts spent on Facebook ads and troll farms had outsize influence on the election, to the point that it was more effective than the nearly $800 million spent on Clinton's behalf, nearly double what was spent on Trump.

Did Russia try to stir things up? I have no doubt that they did, and have done so in many other elections (and so have countries we would consider allies). We've done the same to others and will continue to do so as well. In 2016 the Dem and GOP establishments ignored the fact that support for Sanders and Trump signified that a big part of the electorate is fed up with the uni-party that controls DC. Incredibly, the Democrats stuck with a nominee under FBI investigation, who has never demonstrated actual political talent, who was proudly part of the establishment half of us can't stand, and who couldn't formulate a coherent campaign message despite dreaming of being elected president for 20 years!

Posted by Arclight on 2018-08-02 14:04:27

Brilliant, thank you.

Chait has been consistently wrong forever. But he gets paid for it. Just like Wall St. Dems get paid to lose.~